MIT Researchers Track Trash to Encourage Recycling

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MIT Researchers Track Trash to Encourage Recycling

MIT researchers are tracking trash to encourage consumers to recycle by illustrating the amount of energy required to dispose of waste.

For the Trash Track program, the MIT research team is planting special tags on different types of waste to track their journey through disposal systems in New York and Seattle. The tags are wireless monitors, which report the location of each piece of garbage to a central server. This way, the public will be able to view each piece of garbage on a visual map in real time.

"When you have paper in your hand and you throw it away, you lose the connection because that doesn't belong to you," explained Musstanser Tinauli, a research assistant at MIT Senseable City lab, in a phone interview with Wired.com. "But our tags make this invisible connection between the people and their trash because it keeps sending the message that it's still alive. We do see there's going to be a very strong behavioral impact."

Over the weekend, the Trash Track team began deploying tagged trash throughout Seattle. When the project concludes, a group of end-of-cycle experts will analyze the environmental impact of each type of waste based on the distance it traveled and the amount of carbon dioxide emitted, according to Tinauli.

Trash Track's tracking map will be available soon at MIT's Trash Blog. See a photo of the tracking tag below the jump.